Hoffman accuses Hollywood of glamorising use of guns in films

Date: February 01 2013

Ben Child

THE Oscar-winning actor Dustin Hoffman has dismissed the depiction of gun violence in Hollywood as ''fraudulent'' and claimed that studios discriminate against actors who refuse to carry firearms on-screen.

Interviewed on National Public Radio in the US, The Graduate star became the latest figure to wade into the gun control debate following the killing of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December. Advocates of gun control have used the opportunity to press for new laws to stop similar massacres, but Hollywood has also come under sustained pressure for what many see as its glamorisation of firearm use.

Hoffman, 75, said he had tried throughout his career to avoid films that required him to use guns on-screen - though he conceded he carried a weapon in Straw Dogs, Hook and Little Big Man - for personal reasons and because he does not believe they should be part of the entertainment industry.

''I have always felt passionate about the fact that the audience is identifying [with movie violence] in a very fraudulent way,'' Mr Hoffman revealed.

''I don't find anything interesting about a gun. A gun is there to threaten or kill.''

The actor revealed he was once targeted by a gun-toting theatre producer during the 1960s, an experience that had left him with fierce anti-firearm views.

''I don't think people understand what it's like to have a gun pointed at you,'' he said.

''When it happened to me after Kennedy had just been assassinated. I was in Boston. I remember thinking, 'I'm going to take a hit' and every second you are feeling the bullet go straight through you …''

Mr Hoffman said directors were often guilty of using violent scenes to bolster a plot because ''the script is lacking''.

He said that a gun was ''rarely used in film in a way that it feels like in life''. ''It's simplified into being a cartoon experience.''

Perhaps even more controversially, Mr Hoffman implied that actors had seen their careers stifled due to a refusal to carry guns on-screen.

''If you are not holding a gun, and that is something I have always refused to do, then suddenly this person who was always offered leading roles, suddenly gets offered supporting parts then you … start getting offered cameos.''

Guardian News & Media

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